.: Centre for Integral Transformation - Cultural Transformation :.

Consultancy

Cultural Transformation

Why Cultural Transformation

First of all, from the dictionary;

“The predominating attitudes and behavior that characterize the functioning of a group or organization. The application of the term culture to the collective attitudes and behavior of corporations arose in business jargon during the late 1980s and early 1990s.”

The popular view of ‘Culture’ within organisation is that it is some ethereal notion which has no basis in the ‘real world’. Therefore, you would ‘ignore it’ rather than ‘transform it’.

The dictionary definition gives an insight into a different perspective by its use of the word ‘behaviour’. In other words the way people behave can be influenced, if not dictated, by the prevailing culture.

In fact a four year study of 200 firms in 20 industries, carried out by Kotter and Heskett of Harvard Business School (Source: Corporate Culture and Performance, Kotter and Heskett, 1992), found that firms with a strong adaptive culture based on shared values, outperformed firms with rigid or weak cultures by a significant margin. The survey showed that they;

revenue grew more than four times faster
rate of job creation was seven times higher
stock price grew twelve times faster
profit performance was 750 times higher

Similar findings were made by Jim Collins & Jerry Porras on their seminal work on the successful habits of visionary companies, Built to Last.

So culture can significantly affect your performance in many ways, the question is how do you go about finding out what it is, what you want it to be. And how do you then transform from current to future states.

How to Transform Cultures

Surprisingly to most people, there are a number of ways of measuring cultures including PeopleScan from the Spiral Dynamics Group, and MindMap and BrainMaker from the Brain Technologies Corp.

The method that the Centre for Integral Transformation has chosen as being the most comprehensive and fitting closely with our other services are the Cultural Transformation Tools (CTT) based on the work of Richard Barrett (author of ‘Liberating the Corporate Soul’) from The Values Centre.

CTT are based on seven levels of consciousness, as shown below:

Once an engagement is agreed, the first step is to look at the scope of the assignment, the order in which the steps will be best carried out, questions of phases can be established, and the timescales for the exercise established. Sometimes a ‘proof of concept’ is performed to convince everyone of the value, perhaps dealing with one small group rather than the entire organisation. Below is some example out put from an actual organisation:

Diagrams such as the above are produced during the assignment, using CTT, together with a great deal of statistical analysis and interpretation, resulting in a picture of the organisation’s Cultural Transformational needs. A plan is then created jointly of how to move the organisation from the current culture to the desired one, and how to further align individuals to this desired culture.

Assignments are led by a Principal Consultant or Associate and can be as little as 5 man days for a proof of concept rising to 50-100 days for a full blown transformation plan.

Why the Centre for Integral Transformation?

The Centre for Integral Transformation takes an exceptionally pragmatic view of Cultural Transformation, this not an ‘airy-fairy’ concept but something that adds real benefit, bottom line benefit. We also take a much broader perspective than any other consulting organisation, a view we call the ‘Full Spectrum Approach’ which covers systems, processes, people and culture as shown below;

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